


Femme de Rochas

by middlemarch



Category: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Character Study, F/M, Marriage, Parenthood, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 14:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15390669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd only made one joke about turning up like an unlucky penny. Joel hadn't liked it.





	Femme de Rochas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Joel cried in the shower and after the first time, he didn’t bother to claim it was soap in his eyes. Penny washed his back and let him face the tiles instead of her. She made him toast the way he said he liked it but he never finished one slice, not even spread with the expensive imported orange marmalade she’d spent a week’s pay to get. She lay in the bed they shared after he’d fallen asleep and wondered. He was a better lover than she’d ever had before, but though her body was always most pleasantly satisfied after, she’d never felt lonelier. He was quiet now when he came, after calling out _neshama_ the first few times. She wasn’t stupid—she only had to look in his eyes and know he could never mean her. She kept a smile on her face whenever she thought he’d look and stored up bits of praise to coddle him with, like the stale bread he saved to throw to the ducks when he took his son to Central Park. The boy looked like him at least—she didn’t have to see a little Midge Maisel regarding her with a perpetual quizzical appraisal.

She’d pitied Midge at first, listening to Joel in the office and after they got the apartment. Now, Penny meant to outlast her hold on Joel. She could be patient, she could be happy to get a paper wrapped bouquet of roses that Joel had clearly gotten her from some obscure sense of guilt. She couldn’t wear Femme de Rochas because Midge had and Penny resented that, but she didn’t complain. Midge complained all the time and coaxed and cajoled; Penny didn’t do any of that. She was going to be an oasis, a fixed point of serenity that Joel would come to rely on. When he left the apartment, she brewed a fresh pot of coffee and turned up the radio, wishing she could open the window and lean out, watching the street below. She wouldn’t know how to explain herself to Joel and he wouldn’t like that.

**Author's Note:**

> Little character study for the cardboard cut-out who is Penny. Femme de Rochas was a very popular perfume from 1944.
> 
> For pumpkin pasties, who wondered what I thought.
> 
> "Neshama" is Hebrew for soul and is the endearment I have Joel use for Midge.


End file.
